Dark Tourism in Japan
Jul. 19th, 2024 07:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingI'm still working on the abstract for the panel I'll give at Casa Con in December, but this is what it looks like right now.
Japan is experiencing a demographic shift that has seen young people gravitate toward cities while rural areas suffer from depopulation. The proliferation of ghost towns in rural Japan has given rise to “haikyo exploration,” or visiting abandoned places as a form of amusement. Haikyo exploration is a category of dark tourism, in which places associated with death and disaster are reconfigured as tourist attractions. In this talk, I’ll trace the roots of dark tourism in Japan, which I’ll connect with similar practices in Europe and North America. I’ll chart the rise of contemporary dark tourism in Japan, which I’ll illustrate with examples of unique historical interest, and I’ll close by discussing opportunities for virtual haikyo exploration through anime, manga, and video games. Join me for a relaxing stroll through the green and beautiful ruins of civilization!
ETA: Here's a tidier eighty-word version:
The proliferation of ghost towns in rural Japan has given rise to “haikyo exploration,” or visiting abandoned places as a form of amusement. Haikyo exploration is a category of dark tourism, in which places associated with death and disaster are reconfigured as tourist attractions. In this talk, I’ll trace the roots of dark tourism and discuss opportunities for virtual haikyo exploration through anime, manga, and video games. Join me for a relaxing stroll through the green and beautiful ruins of civilization!
I decided to toss the "paranormal tourism" angle of this talk, which feels a bit silly, and keep the content of the lecture limited to what I teach in my Japanese Ghost Stories class. That's a surprisingly successful class to begin with, and this is always one of the livelier lectures. I'll need to make sure to leave time for audience interactivity at the end, because people seem to love to talk about this sort of thing.
I mean, there's definitely haikyo exploration in the United States as well. And a lot of it is in Ohio?
Japan is experiencing a demographic shift that has seen young people gravitate toward cities while rural areas suffer from depopulation. The proliferation of ghost towns in rural Japan has given rise to “haikyo exploration,” or visiting abandoned places as a form of amusement. Haikyo exploration is a category of dark tourism, in which places associated with death and disaster are reconfigured as tourist attractions. In this talk, I’ll trace the roots of dark tourism in Japan, which I’ll connect with similar practices in Europe and North America. I’ll chart the rise of contemporary dark tourism in Japan, which I’ll illustrate with examples of unique historical interest, and I’ll close by discussing opportunities for virtual haikyo exploration through anime, manga, and video games. Join me for a relaxing stroll through the green and beautiful ruins of civilization!
ETA: Here's a tidier eighty-word version:
The proliferation of ghost towns in rural Japan has given rise to “haikyo exploration,” or visiting abandoned places as a form of amusement. Haikyo exploration is a category of dark tourism, in which places associated with death and disaster are reconfigured as tourist attractions. In this talk, I’ll trace the roots of dark tourism and discuss opportunities for virtual haikyo exploration through anime, manga, and video games. Join me for a relaxing stroll through the green and beautiful ruins of civilization!
I decided to toss the "paranormal tourism" angle of this talk, which feels a bit silly, and keep the content of the lecture limited to what I teach in my Japanese Ghost Stories class. That's a surprisingly successful class to begin with, and this is always one of the livelier lectures. I'll need to make sure to leave time for audience interactivity at the end, because people seem to love to talk about this sort of thing.
I mean, there's definitely haikyo exploration in the United States as well. And a lot of it is in Ohio?
